Local Interest: Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a Greek-born journalist who lived in Japan from 1890 until his death. His Japanese name was Koizumi Yakumo. While living in Japan, he wrote several books about local customs and ghost stories. His most well-known book was Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903), several stories from which served as the basis for the 1964 film Kwaidan directed by Japanese director Kobayashi Masaki, which won the special jury prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival.

Before going to Japan, Hearn lived in New Orleans for ten years, moving there in 1877 to report for various newspapers. Interestingly, his writing in New Orleans was similar to the type of writing that he did in Japan in terms of its focus on local customs, in particular, on the Creole dialect, cuisine, and voodoo. He is credited by some modern scholars for shaping the image of New Orleans as possessing a distinct local culture due to its multicultural legacy.

Let's return to the period of time that Hearn spent in Japan. In addition to his career as a newspaper journalist, Hearn also taught English literature at Tokyo University and Waseda University. He married Koizumi Setsu and became a Japanese citizen. Although Hearn is best known for his collections of ghost stories, he also wrote about Japanese art and aesthetics, such as an article entitled "Faces in Japanese Art" in the Atlantic Monthly (August 1896, Vol. 78, Issue 466, pp. 219-227).

Hearn's New Orleans home has been designated a local landmark and is now owned by Richard Scribner, a professor in the LSU School of Public Health. Many of his writings on New Orleans life and customs have been collected in S. Frederick Starr, ed., Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001). An article about Hearn's cookbook La Cuisine Creole (1885), and several recipes from it can be found here:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/food/side/4544683.html

Lafcadio Hearn is a fascinating link not only between Japan and the state of Louisiana, but also with LSU!

(photo of Lafcadio Hearn from Wikimedia Commons)